Being so constant a visitor, Robert Adams had his own rooms at Dom
Amaral's, where he found his bags unpacked and the clothes laid out by
those deftest of servants, the Chinese. According to custom the dinner
of Macao was served at the late hour of nine.

Dom Luiz Diego de Amaral was one of the wealthiest Portuguese in the
city, having, unlike most of his fellow citizens, investments abroad
which brought him a considerable income after the birth of Hong Kong
killed Macao and left it a city of the past, of poverty and pride.
Having in his youth married a Spanish woman who bore him one son, Pedro,
he was left a widower before the age of twenty-five.

Some years after, being in Boston where he then had large shipping
interests, he took a second wife, Priscilla Harvey, and returned to
Macao. Madam de Amaral's only sister, wife of Captain Fernald had one
child which was left an orphan at an early age by the drowning of both
parents in Portsmouth harbour.

This orphan, Priscilla Fernald, was taken to her aunt in China and
became a member of the household of Dom Amaral. It was a strange
transplanting for such a flower from the cold coast of Puritan New
England to the tropical, Roman Catholic colony in the heart of
heathendom. But the flower of so sturdy a stock remained true. It was
long accepted by all, even by the maiden Priscilla, that young Amaral
was to be her husband though nothing had been said on the subject.
Later, the small circle of Macao society, of which poverty and pride
were the ruling features, became too dull for the young girl and her
foster parents took her often to Hong Kong where she met with those of
the outer world.